I've spent some time in DC, I have friends in DC, I'm pretty familiar with the knocks DC takes... and lack of "art/history/science/etc things" has never been one of them. Isn't DC actually pretty amazing for that stuff? And, can you clue me in on the art/history/science stuff you've found to do in San Francisco?
To be fair, I lived in the burbs of DC and I live in SF proper. So it's not really an apples to apples comparison for me. There is certainly tons of museums and such in dc to see and they all have various programs. I may very well have just not been clued in to what was going on, but it didn't take long for me to find those types of things here in SF. I never really found them living near dc my whole life (and 7 years after college).
For science stuff in the bay area the best resource is probably http://www.bayareascience.org/ Follow the twitter feed and you'll see there are generally 4 or 5 things a day going on just in science related fields.
For art/social things I generally check out squidlist.com, but many other sites like sfist.com have a ton of things to do listings daily.
Plus there's just a ton of orgs in and around the city that have ongoing lecture series type of events. Asian Art Museum, Cal Academy of Science, Grey Area Foundation For the Arts, Friday's at the DeYoung, etc.
Tons of stuff...and a lot of it goes on outside of SF proper too with Berkeley and Stanford being so close.
I'm not the parent, but for starters, there's the Academy of Sciences, the DeYoung Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Legion of Honor, and Fort Point.
Has SFMOMA gotten better? The Cal Academy barely qualifies as a wing of the American Museum of Natural History; the Legion barely a wing of (even) the Art Institute.
I concede that there are museums. I question whether they're in the same league as their DC equivalents.
Went to the Moma a couple of weeks ago and was disappointed to be honest. I don't think their collection is that great, but I also think I'm just not a fan of most modern art. Oh well.
DC's museums are world class. SF can't compare very well in most instances (The asian art museum is really nice...the shanghai exhibit was great...but now gone). Also, DC museums are free which is really nice.
In the OP I wasn't really talking about the museums themselves though. More about lectures, book clubs, science/art/literature cafe's, etc.
There are tons of such activities in the DC area. I have lived in DC for a few years, and I suspect that the OP was not keyed into such activities in the DC area. There is a very large population of highly educated individuals in the DC area across a wide range of professions, industries, etc. There is a thriving private sector in the DC area, and it is not just government-oriented. Hilton and Marriott, for instance, are based in the DC area. The DC area has one of the highest, if not the highest, proportions of knowledge workers in the country, including a very large IT community and a healthy startup community. Also, the OP must have been too far out in the 'burbs. The DC Metro system is one of the best in the country, and it extends out into the suburbs. In many areas of DC and closer-in suburbs, you could easily get by without having a car if you live near a Metro station. Zipcar also has a very large presence in DC. Overall, the DC area offers a very high quality of life professionally, culturally, and educationally and in terms of opportunities for a range of outdoor activities and professional athletics.
Agree on DC's Metro system, it's fantastic. I go to DC regularly and never really have to take a cab, even if I need to get somewhere in one of the suburbs. People in DC tend to rip on the Metro because of occasional outages, but I don't think they've experienced other systems in larger cities. I love living in Chicago, but the "el" could definitely learn from some of Metro's practices.
I don't disagree with any of that. Maybe it's because I was born there. It just felt old and crusty. Moving to SF was a shot in the arm in all kinds of ways for me and it just feels a lot more energetic than the DC scene did.
I grew up in Alexandria and lived in Reston for 6 years. Yes, reston is far out...but that's where work was. 5 minute drive to work in the DC area? Sign me up!
